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Crime (London)

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on an issue of great concern to many of my constituents, who regularly get in touch with me about it. Like many hon. Members, I have been disappointed by the tone of the debate. I am also disappointed that I am again the only Wandsworth MP to contribute to a debate about crime in London, which is a concern not only for my constituents, but across my London borough. My constituents have a number of concerns about crime. They are worried about their children; they are worried when they come home from work late, which I do when we have late votes here; and my constituents who run businesses are concerned about the lack of policing when they open their shops late, which I shall briefly discuss later. Although we have heard a lot of talk about safer neighbourhood policing—we welcome our local safer neighbourhood teams—beat policing is nothing new. For years, having the police out in the community has been the bedrock of keeping crime down in communities across England, let alone London. The Government have rebranded beat police as safer neighbourhood teams, but community beat police officers are critical whatever name is used to describe specific teams in specific wards. In my part of London, we have to wait far too long for our safer neighbourhood teams to get their full complement. As I have said, compared with the number of warranted officers in the Wandsworth borough command unit a decade ago, we have fewer officers. We have police community support officers, who play a vital role in tackling crime locally, but they were never meant to be a substitute for the officers whom we have lost in Wandsworth. When my constituents find that their London precept for the Met has quadrupled to fund a lower level of warranted police officers in their local community, they do not think that they have got a good deal. The officers work extremely hard. I pay tribute to the safer neighbourhood team in Roehampton, which is led by Sergeant Pete Salmon. Given the number of officers, it has done a fantastic job in getting out into the community. They work with the local community in not only places such as the Alton estate and the Lennox estate, but the university of Roehampton, which forms an increasing part of the Roehampton community as it grows. The team's problem—and one that we as a community have in areas such as Roehampton—is that although it works hard, there is not enough of a police presence alongside it. I am thinking not only of the day time, when many of the safer neighbourhood teams operate; I am thinking particularly of the night time, when there are an increasing number of crime-related issues across my constituency. Safer neighbourhood teams that patrol during the day are simply not there at night, so they cannot address those issues. I particularly want to talk about local businesses. Like many London constituencies, my constituency, which includes places such as Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, does not contain large companies. The lifeblood of our local economy is small businesses, which are particularly prone to crime. The window of the Putney Tandoori on the Lower Richmond road, for example, has been smashed two or three times. Time and money has to be spent, and the shop has to be shut down, for the windows to be repaired. That has a real impact on the profitability of a business. When businesses on Danebury avenue are constantly being raided, the circumstances do not make for viable businesses; I know that Greggs bakery there has had such problems. If we are to regenerate parts of London—and we certainly want to regenerate Roehampton—clamping down on crime and making sure that people feel safe at any time of the day or night is really important. My concern about today's debate is that it has not been on behalf of people; frankly, too much of it has been about point scoring by the Labour Benches. If any of my neighbour MPs in Wandsworth had been here to speak in this debate, they would have been able to make the points that the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) was left to read out. I look forward to finally having a debate on crime in London in which my colleagues—